A recorder marker was designed to relay the ships logs and other relevant information back to its command base. Recorder markers were launched in situations when a ship could not use its communications system to relay the information before the imminent destruction or capture of the ship. The recorder marker was built to withstand the complete destruction of the starship at close range, with a minimal possibility of external forces causing damage to the data held within. (TOS: "Where No Man Has Gone Before"; Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan; TNG: "Descent, Part II")

Starships as well as other smaller craft also carried a data recorder also known as a flight recorder or a mission recorder, where the same data was stored. The recorder was built to withstand the destruction of the ship, so that it could be salvaged from the wreckage after the destruction of the craft. (ENT: "Babel One"; TNG: "The First Duty")

This type of disaster recorder was described, in the script for "Where No Man Has Gone Before", as, "a somewhat spherical device about three feet tall, sitting on tripod legs." It was also said to have a "metallic surface."

According to Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual (p. 118), these 24th century Federation emergency buoys were class 9 warp probes, typically used as an emergency log/message capsule on a homing trajectory to the nearest starbase or known Starfleet vessel position. They could travel at warp 9 for twelve hours or at warp 8 for fourteen days. The probes' memory contained 3,400 kiloquads of isolinear memory storage.